Question

With the help of a suitable example and an equation, explain the term pair production.

Answer 1

When an energetic y-ray photon falls on a heavy substance, it is absorbed by some nucleus of the substance and its energy gives rise to the production of an electron and a positron. This phenomenon in which energy is converted into mass, is called pair-production and may be represented by the following equation.
$\underset{y-photon}{hv}=\underset{\left(electron\right)}{{}_{-1}{\beta }^0}+\underset{\left(position\right)}{{}_1{\beta }^0}$